“I feel horrible,” Suzanne Hodgkinson told reporters. “I had no idea this was going to happen, and I don’t know what to say about it. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Hodgkinson, who only agreed to speak on the condition that the press vacate her property afterward, explained that she and her husband of 30 years were not on the best terms and had been living separately since he sold almost all of his possessions and left their home in Belleville earlier this year. He had told her, she said, that he had been planning a trip to Washington D.C. to “work on taxes” and “change the tax brackets.”

“I can’t believe he did this. I just want you all to go away and leave my neighbors in peace,” she said, referring to the press crowding the street outside her house. “They don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve this, my daughters don’t deserve this.” Reporters who were on the scene described Hodgkinson as “visibly emotional” as she spoke with the media.